Ukraine’s July wheat stocks hit 10-year low on record exports in 2019/20

Ukraine has entered the new 2020/21 marketing season with wheat stocks at a 10-year low of 1.8 million mt after the record export pace of 2019/20 drained inventories, data released Friday by the State Statistics Service of Ukraine showed.

In the 2019/20 marketing season, Ukraine exported a record 20.5 million mt of wheat, an increase of 31% or 5 million mt from the 2018/19 season.

Barley 2019/20 exports surged 41% on the year to 5.1 million mt thanks to higher production in 2019.

But barley stock levels on July 1 were down 34% year-on-year at 1.4 million mt, mainly reflecting the impact of delayed harvesting.

Given exports of a record 28.5 million mt since September 2019, July corn stocks are an estimated 2 million mt, down 22% from July 2019.

As for oilseeds, Ukrainian sunseed crushers continue to set records due to the bumper crop in 2019, with nearly 1 million mt of seeds crushed in June.

That took the total volume crushed in the 10-month period to the end of June to an all-time high of 11.8 million mt, up 12% on the equivalent year-ago period.

Despite record crush volumes, sunseed stocks stood at 1.4 million mt on July 1 this year, about the same as in the previous year.

Soybean stocks in Ukraine dropped by about half compared with the volume registered on July 1 last year to 338,000 mt, with just 97,000 mt of that volume stored at crushing plants.

Despite a sharp drop in June exports to 35,000 mt, Ukraine’s shipments of soybeans between September and June hit their third-highest recorded level at 2.6 million mt, up 17% on the year.

Soybean crush showed a surprising increase in June to 107,000 mt from the 98,000 mt crushed in May, partly owing to the 20,000 mt of Brazilian soybeans imported at the end of May.

The total crush of soybeans has reached 1 million mt since the start of the season in September 2019, only 148,000 mt behind last year’s volume.

For rapeseed, July stocks stood at just 180,000 mt compared to 580,000 mt on July 1 last year. The drop is due to a delay in winter crop harvesting in Ukraine this year.